The 10th Day of Christmas. Redeeming "rationalitas"
A Christmas story for grown ups. Inspired by Hildegard of Bingen. For her Rationality lies not in an especially detached way of thinking, but at the heart of Divine birth. In every human heart.
Dear fellow pilgrim,
Rationality has a bad reputation. Most people understand it as a masculine way of thinking detached from feelings and lived experience.
But for the medieval renaissance woman Hildegard of Bingen rationalitas not only encompasses “the entirety of Divine greening power, ordering wisdom, and self-giving love”1 but also the mystery of Divine birth we contemplate in the Christmas tradition.
Now that’s different… But what could all that mean?
Well, let me tell you about the “epiphany” I had when I took a little booklet from my bookshelf on the 3d Day of Christmas containing Hildegard’s Christmas homilies. And it is with this thought that I have been walking pregnant, not only since then, but probably since a very long time.
So, please, bear with me…. This will be not an easy birth. I have been laboring on it now for 7 days (and probably also for the last 7 years of our Christmas Contemplations).
I suggest you meditate as you read. We need our all, body, heart and mind to feel our way into this mind challenging wholistic concept. Participating in Divine knowing requires nothing less than a sacred birth:
Walking pregnant, laboring, and birthing the new insight in our humble heart.
So it might take a little time :-)
I hope what has become my “epiphany” on this pilgrimage will lead you on the path of the wise (wo)men journeying to the stable of the new born child, Emmanuel, God with us, The divine incarnate, or, as we read in John 1, the word which became flesh.
I am particularly fond of the fact that Hildegard and I cherish the same Christmas text, namely the one which does not speak about the holy family in terms of Mary, Joseph and the Jesus baby. But the one that comes in more cryptic terms, and thus probably more appealing to “philosophas,” women who do philo-sophy (love of wisdom). It speaks a revealing word about the Word who becomes flesh and dwells among us.
From early on in my life, these words have burned themselves in my heart. So I recite them now from my heart’s memory. Read it like a monastic prayer, aloud, slowly, with breathing pauses at each *.
I the beginning was the word*
and the word was with God
and God was the word…*…
***
And the word
was made flesh*
and
dwelled among us……
This eternal word of the beginning is the rationalitas of God, and it expresses itself as the sounding word which lives forth in in every created being.2 Hildegard uses the Latin rationalitas here for the Greek logos, as it reads in the original text in John 1:
In the beginning was “logos” / “rationalitas”
This logos of the beginning as the Christian tradition has it at it’s core (oddly many grow up thinking that faith and rationality are opposing each other and thus feel the need of deciding for one and leaving the other behind) has also inspired Jewish thinkers like Martin Buber, who writes about “living knowledge” in contrast to our abstract way of knowing like one would know a certain fact. The Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl built his Logo-therapy approach literally around “logos,” centering his theory of health on the human ability and need to transcendence and meaning making.
In order to grasp Hilegard’s understanding of rationalitas/logos, as this eternal word from the beginning, which seeks its dwelling place in us I will continue to use her Latin rationalitas instead of the now desiccated English “rationality.”
And so, in her 9th homily3, which is an interpretation of John1: 1-14, Hildegard writes:
“The Lord’s birth
In the beginning was the word.
Clearly, at the origin of the world,
there was rationalitas,
which is the Son.
And the word that is rationalitas,
was with God, because God is rationalitas.
So, while we find rationalitas in humans, it has its origin in God, the eternal, who is without beginning, who gives forth her rationalitas in acts of love, which is in creation.
Latest at this point I have students very confused. All of this sounds very different than academic ears are used to. It requires nothing less than to give up our dichotomies and dualities and venture into the threefold understanding of all things. So tomorrow we will meditate on a Hildegard illumination which will help us to just do that.
In her theological summa De operations Dei (Works of God) Hildegard gives words to this act of Creation. Here the great “I am” speaks (my translation):4
I am
rationalitas, carrying within me the breath of the sounding word through which all creation has been made. I am breathing life into all things, so that nothing will die. Because I am life.I am the whole and wholesome life (vita integra): neither hewn from stones nor flowering from branches… Rather all life is rooted in me. Rationalitas is the root, and the sounding word blooms from it.
***
Our life, dear friend, has its roots in rationalitas, the word of the beginning, which set all life into motion. Rationalitas with which Mary, our human soul, goes pregnant, guarded and guided by Joseph, wisdom, to birth new life and new beginnings.
Thus the Christmas story then is the story of the Divine word brought to life in a human being.
Here is how I explain it in more philosophical terms in an encyclopedia article:
Hildegard’s final cosmological summa Liber Divinorum operum (LDO; “Book of Divine works”), brings together key terms like viriditas, caritas, and rationalitas into a “final, great synthesis” (King-Lenzmeier 2001, 62). Viriditas, the Divine life force, is the “greenness of God’s finger” (viriditas digit Dei) that burst all creation into being. Love (caritas) is the guiding creation principle – the first cause of the world, expressed in a relational act of creation (Zátonyi 2016, 53ff.). In the first vision it appears as a shimmering illumination of a beautiful figure too radiant to look at, clad in a tunic, brighter than the sun, speaking: “I am the supreme life force who has kindled all sparks of life” (LDO I. 1). The two-headed figure symbolizes the love of the heavenly father taking on human form (caritas), creating and holding the whole universe in motherly embrace. The great “I am” also identifies as rationalitas, the breath of the sounding word, through which all creation was made. Hildegard’s theocen- tric use of the Latin rationalitas is a reference to the Greek logos, from the creation narrative in the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the word,” a text that deeply moved Hildegard. For her, rationalitas encompasses the entirety of Divine greening power, ordering wisdom, and self-giving love (Zátonyi 2017, 137).
from: Almut Furchert,Hildegard of Bingen. In: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, 2021.
Which leaves us today, on this 10th Day of Christmas with many open questions. But also with the insight that the Christmas story and the creation story are ultimately intertwined. And it is driven by, and embodies Rationalitas, “the entirety of Divine greening power, ordering wisdom, and self-giving love.” This is what lies sleeping in the manger offering salvation to all.
Birthing wisdom, redeeming rationality
Are you still with me, dear Pilgrim? Let us bring this philosophical excursion back into our Christmas Pilgrimage. Remember that Hildegard described Mary as the faithful soul and Joseph as the wisdom who guards and guides her (I wrote about it on Day three). Now the child she carries is rationalitas, the sounding word of eternity, the word which will make every thing new also in you.
That, my dear friend, is the Christmas story for grown ups!
It is the good news which can enliven a rationality that has withered into a dull, desiccated philosophical virtue. Instead, for Hildegard, the Christmas story happens in us when our rationalitas is born into our souls, by our soul (Mary), guarded by wisdom (Joseph). This very birth connects the eternal with the temporal, birthing the eternal Rationalitas into our humble stable.
Birthing Divine knowing into our own being is Christmas for grown ups!
This is the good news the angels bring to the shepherds who stand, in Hildegard’s interpretation, as “solicitude for the mind.” We are the shepherds on the field, caring (solicitude) for our flocks! Then the angels sing to the shepherds, and also to us weary pilgrims:
“Do not fear, for behold, I announce to you good news of great joy…
What is born in you is salvation, because you have been made in the image and likeness of God…”.
— — Hildegard of Bingen
Thus, in order for our gift of rationality to be alive, to become alive we need to birth it into our hearts in its full form, in intimate relation to wisdom, her guardian, and inspired by Divine love herself.
Hildegard’s reading of this story offers us a new way of seeing the Divine incarnate, as Divine Rationalitas breathing in us, loving, greening, caring. It is this with which we are walking pregnant, slowly birthing…
Well, friends, this is how far I have come on this Eve and dawn of the 10th Christmas Day. This insight is just a newborn, recently pushed into the humble hay. Hopefully already, it might give us a glimpse of the full, round, loving rationalitas of God-with-us and God-in-us.
Let me know if and how it has moved your heart today.
And may Christmas find you where you are, Almut
This post is part of our 12 Days of Christmas Series 2023/24: “Reclaiming Joy,” a Contemplative Journey towards the heart of Christmas. You can find all previous posts here. To subscribe or to upgrade your subscription click here. To share your thoughts with us, respond to this email or comment below.
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Fabio Chávez Alvarez, “Die brennende Vernunft": Studien zur Semantik der "Rationalitas" bei Hildegard von Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen. Homilies on the Gospels. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Liturgical Press 2011, pp. 55ff)
Freely translated from Hildegard von Bingen: Welt und Mensch, 1965, Otto Müller.
Wow thank you for cracking open Hildegard
I will def be pondering it for awhile 🙏🏼
❤️